How Ed can be the seat winner but vote loser

Lots of talk at the moment about another hung parliament fueled partly by the hitherto unlikely “revelation” from Ed Balls that he’s respected all along the LD decision in May 2010 to go into coalition with the Tories.

One thing that hasn’t been focused on is what sort of result would lead to such a move. Featured above is a seat projection from Electoral Calculus on what happens on a uniform national swing if LAB gets 34% of the GB vote and CON 36%.

As can be seen although the Tories have 2% more votes Labour are closest to a majority in terms of seats.

In fact the table above flatters the Tories because the chances are that they would secure nothing like the 21 gains from the Lib Dems that the projection envisages.

With Labour apparently doing so much better in the key battlegrounds according to all the marginals polling the bias towards it is likely to be even greater.

I’ve been playing about with the numbers and it is hard to see LAB falling short on the number of seats to secure a majority if it has come top on votes.

The system just works in its favour so much and this is likely to be more so if there’s a disproportionate swing in the marginals.

So if there was a LD-LAB coalition it would involve the yellows teaming up with the party that was second in terms of votes to form a government. That would seem a bit odd given all that it has said over the years about electoral reform.